Thursday, July 29, 2010

We are Finalists in Lightology Contest!!!

I got married on July 11! But more about that later. Right now, I want to talk about a contest my business partner, Jasmin Marie and I entered at Lightology in Chicago, IL.

The contest challenged designers to create a way to use Lightology's LED soft strips in a new and unique way. The final designs were due June 30, 2010.

Jasmine works full time, we are working on our own company, Cadmium Interiors and, well, you know what I was doing those last two weeks before my wedding. Additionally, I am an assistant to Alison Gramenos of Alison Victoria Interiors and had some various projects to work on. Imagine we were a bit frantic to get this design completed!

Jasmine and I met at Trump's lounge to be inspired and to work on our design idea. Jasmine thought of doing garden furniture, but had found some out there in the format she was thinking. So, we brainstormed together about how we could change our idea. We went through a few different iterations and looked at various ideas online to continue to feed our creativity. We came up with a way to possibly reuse or build a wooden chair, encase it in a museum like box made of Lucite or some such clear plastic and create a floating effect using the LED strips on the bottom side of the wooden chair being encased. We had a hard time agreeing on a name of the design.


We made a Sketchup model, with three different views. Jasmine did a CAD drawing of the front view of the object and then had to leave for Boston for a wedding! I continued to work on the pictures and filled out the entry form which requested specifications of the object and construction strategy. Jasmine gave me freedom to change the name from Klismos. I chose Hortus Sculptura Chair as this shows that it is a garden chair and is much like a museum piece to be displayed but also functional. This chair was functional to be used outside, create a soft romantic light for evening use and display a nice chair. I submitted the entry the afternoon that it was due.

On July 7, we anxiously awaited news of the contest results and finally, I got the call - we were one of 16 finalists in the contest. NOW, comes the hard part - getting it fabricated by the end of August so that it can be viewed and hopefully picked as the best of the bunch!!! We are trying to find someone to fabricate the case. It's complicated because we would like the back and seat to be contoured but this requires a mold and thus very expensive. We may have to go with a straight back and seat. The end result is judged on how close it is to the original design, so we would rather go with a contour.

I will keep you posted on how this goes...

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